


Soft Brakes

by hellkitty



Category: Elysium (2013)
Genre: Angst, Community: angst_bingo, Gen, Moral Dilemmas, Pre-Canon, Tags Are Hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 20:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brutally high pain night, so I  barfed this out because it was easier than realizing that your favorite dumbass (unless you have another favorite dumbass, in which case I will cry) once again left the pain meds downstairs. So much for all that education vs common sense, yeah? </p>
<p>Angst-bingo prompt 'moral quandary'.  Set pre-canon.  Slipshod writing, because see above.  Also, my usual disclaimer LOL I hablo precisely zero espanol. There's some salty profanity, but nothing particularly original.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soft Brakes

It was the car. It was the car’s fault.  Bald brake pads, air in the hose.  His mind ticked through half a dozen things it could be, when he mashed the pedal down, nearly to the floor boards, feeling the entire car shiver, and...not slow down enough to corner sharply enough. He felt, as though it was his body, the thick slam of the fender, the dirt-smeared face of the little girl barely registering anything other than the sound of the screaming tires and blinding halogen headlamp before she went down.

The brakes bit, too late, the car coming to a groaning halt twenty feet down the road.  Max’s hand slammed against the steering wheel, spitting out a stream of profanity over the ticking engine. He could hear the hovers in the distance, police vehicles spiraling in their search pattern from the parking lot he’d stolen this car from.

It was pure reflex, turning off the lights, taking his foot off the brake, so the brakelights dimmed, the vehicle succumbing into shadow. He needed time to think, to figure out a plan.

He wasn’t a good thinker. He’d known that since his first day in the school the nuns had put him in.  He wasn’t good in the best of situations, and now, the adrenaline rush he always got from a good jack was fuzzing through his head, making thinking even harder.  

Maybe it’s not that bad, he thought, squinting in the rearview, praying he’d see the girl walking away, shaking it off.

Nothing. No movement. And the longer he sat there, the more he swore he could hear a muted, muffled sort of sound, like an animal bleating, like the lambs they used to keep in the cloister.  

Fuck. No. FUCK.

The car door opened with a complaining metallic screech that seemed to echo for miles, filling the alleyway.  Too late, Max. You’ve committed to it now.  

He pulled himself out of the driver’s seat, feeling the adrenaline jangling in his veins, his steps feeling loose and uneven, everything too slow and too fast all at once.  Maybe she was dead. Maybe she was already dead and it was out of his hands, there was no choice to make, only a regret that he could drink away like he did all the other things that might have been regrets in his life.

She was there, a mound of limbs and dingy fabric, shifting in small, uneven movements.  

Shit. Goddammit.  He moved toward her, then back, approaching and receding, aware of the passage of every millisecond.  She could be dying by inches, while he hesitated, leaping back when she made a louder sound, one hand twitching.

“You--you okay?” It was a stupid question, that burned his throat even as he said it. Of course she wasn’t fucking okay. He’d just hit her with a late-model Nissan. He’d felt the goddam tire bump over her. She was the exact and precise opposite of ‘okay’.

He heard a blast of static from the car, the walkie talkie he’d tossed in the passenger seat.  He could faintly hear Spider’s voice, and some crosschan chatter.  Probably checking up on him. Right. Because all he needed was more stress right now.  Another thing to consider, another ticking clock.

“Ayuda me,” she said, her voice thready, weak, her dark eyes almost black in the dim street, lit only by feeble bleed of neon from a store down the road.  “Ayuda….”  

He pushed to his feet, sneakers gritting on the broken pavement, turning away. He stopped, squeezing his eyes so tightly shut he almost saw stars, adrenaline fading to that strung out fade of overused nerves, everything starting to feel heavy and slow and stupid.  

“Please,” she said, switching to English, the lightness of his skin registering to her as a stranger, an alien.  

Leave, he told himself. Get the fuck back in the car, find one of Spider’s hideys, and wait till the police choppers finish their sweep. Get moving, don’t look back.  It’s a rough fucking world, and people get hurt. It’s how the system works.  

“No puedo.”

...she’s the same age Frey was when I met her. How would I have felt--

No, Max. You shut that shit up right now.  That’s fucking life. That’s how it works.  Yeah, it sucks. That’s why you’re working for Spider, so you can get out of this shithole.  

“...favor…”  

“I can’t,” he repeated, English this time, and this time his voice cracked, and his will cracked and he turned and looked.  Looked at the dark eyes, looking up imploringly, looking to him to help her even though he was the one to have hurt her in the first place, looking down at the ominous dark welling of blood on her leg, the weird angle of it, the way her lips were pulling back from her teeth in a grimace of pain and shock.  

If he left her, she’d die. The ambulances were private, out here, didn’t come unless you called and paid in advance.  No one would stick their neck out for her, a stranger, another lost little kid in the slums. Like he’d been. Like Frey had been.

“Fuck!” He yelled it loud enough that it echoed up the walls of the street, startling a bone-thin rat to jump to a tense uprightness.  Thinking was not his thing, but he could move, and he did now, turning back, scooping her up as carefully as he could, feeling the limp weight across his forearms, the way she didn’t struggle, even though she gave a small, birdlike cry of pain.  It took some juggling to get her into the passenger seat, and he busied himself with that rather than thinking about what this meant, what he was doing.  

She gave him a wan smile as he climbed in the driver’s seat, reaching to fasten the seatbelt over her body, trying to ignore the obvious irony, before he rehit the ignition wires, the engine grumbling back to life.  

He kept the lights off, rolling slowly at first, making it two blocks down before the walkie talkie squawked again. Spider, demanding to know where he was.  He fumbled down in the seat well, fishing it out, because Spider would just keep fucking screaming until he reported in.

“What?”

“Where the fuck are you? What the hell’s going on? The tracking chip’s fucking dead.”

“Not my fucking fault it’s a cheap piece of shit.” He put the car in second gear, one-handed, picking up speed, driving carefully this time, only, you know, too late.

“Rico’s waiting for you. We got buyers.”

“Gonna have to wait a bit.  Something I have to take care of, first.”

“Fuck that, no. You meet with Rico, now.”

“No.” He looked over at the girl, who gave a whimper of pain as he swung the old Nissan onto the highway on-ramp, mindful of the smushy brakes.  “Look, there was...a thing. Something happened. I’ll take care of it.” He shut the walkie off with a crisp snap, tossing it in the back seat, giving a sickly, probably-not-reassuring smile to the girl. “Hospital, si?”

“...si.” She looked tired, her eye sockets deep and hollow, the voice distant, like she was speaking through a tube or something.  

He reached over, giving her hand--ice cold--what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze.  He could already see the hospital’s lights from the freeway, angling the car through the spotty, lumbering traffic, around the long-parked campers and lean-tos of nomads who had decided that where their vehicle broke down was their new home.  

He knew the car was hot. He knew driving it into the halogen-flooded parking lot of the hospital, even just rolling it up to the emergency crescent, he’d get made: spotted, ID’d, chased. And the car’s shitty brakes meant he wasn’t up for a good car chase. He hesitated, circling the perimeter. He could see the Policia droids, catching the light in sharp slivers off their shined armor, pacing in slow, regular steps, predators just waiting to flush out prey.  

Right, Da Costa.  Your last taste of freedom, and you know it.  Is it worth it?  Is it?

She seemed to know what he was thinking, watching him with glazing eyes, as though quietly respecting that it was his decision to make, and her place only to witness.

He looked over at the girl in the passenger seat, her blood staining the cushion. He didn’t even know her name, didn’t even know if she’d make it, or if she was bleeding too much or if she’d hate him for having to live the rest of her life as a cripple. There was no possible good future coming out of this, any of this.  So what do you pick?  You pick the one you can live with, the one that doesn’t make your own past a lesson you hadn’t learned, that doesn’t turn your heart into concrete.  

 

Max felt something like tears prick into the corners of his eyes. He hadn’t cried in years, not since he was a little kid, not since Frey hadn’t been there to comb her fingers through his hair and pretend she hadn’t seen anything.  He could see those nights of partying with Spider’s crew, but they were faded, like photographs from a long time ago, something already gone, already in the past, and he knew he’d already made his decision.

  
So there was nothing to do, really, but swing the soft-braked car into the pool of light, and try not to blink as it blinded him.


End file.
